Santa Barbara County Science Fair

Santa Barbara County Science Fair

2018 Science Fair

It's March 9 and the Science Fair is today! For a complete list of the projects and schedule of events, please download the Event Program. To find out the results, you are welcome to attend the Awards Ceremony held tonight in UCSB's Corwin Pavillion at 7:00. If you cannot attend the awards ceremony, winners will be posted on the web site on March 10.

Requirements for Projects Involving Vertebrate Animals

In order to help ensure the humane treatment of animals used in research, most projects involving vertebrate animals will require approval in advance from a science review committee. The only exception to this requirement is for projects which observe the animals in a natural environment. This approval may be granted by a review committee at your school, an existing review board at a college or university, or you may submit your project the Science Review Committee (SRC) organized by the Science Fair.

To document approval, download and complete the Request Form from our web site. A completed copy of this form, signed by the reviewing body, should be attached to your lab book. If you have questions about the review process, please email president@sbsciencefair.org

Requirements for Projects Involving Human Subjects

In a similar vein with the vertebrate research requirements, we are implementing additional requirements for research involving human subjects. Starting in 2016, all human subjects projects need receive prior approval from a review body and comply with the Informed Consent rules included in the Guidelines for Students document. This includes providing each potential subject with a Letter of Information and receiving a signed document of Informed Consent prior to participation.

If the subject is a minor, the Informed Consent form must also be signed by the person's parent/guardian unless the project is clearly very low risk. To help get started, some basic templates for a Letter of Information and Informed Consent Form are available for download.

To document approval, download and complete the Human Subjects Approval Form from our web site. A completed copy of this form, signed by the reviewing body, should be attached to your lab book. If you have questions about the review process, please email president@sbsciencefair.org

Engineering Division

In 2018 the Science Fair will again pilot new engineering divisions. Projects competing in these divisions will be judged by different criteria than those in the science divisions. Please download the sample judging form to see the differences between the engineering and science criteria. Note: If there are too few projects to create a competative engineering division, we will roll those projects into the physical science division.

California State Science Fair Results

This year we sent 23 students on to the California State Science Fair in Los Angeles. We would like to congratulate all of them for their work and particularly recognize the following winners at the CSSF:

Innovations In Education Video

The SBCEO has put together a nice video describing the various ways to participate in the Science Fair. If you have questions about competing or volunteering, this is worth watching.

You Can Help

The Santa Barbara County Science Fair is a community sponsored and organized event. If you would like to support the Fair, there are a variety of ways you can help:

Judges are the basis for putting on the science fair and we can never have too many. Judges spend the morning of the Fair interviewing the student-scientists about their work to generate the rankings. If you have a background in the sciences and can spare four hours on a Friday morning for some fun, we could use the help. For more information, please email the Judging Coordinator.

The organizing committee meets several times over the year in order to plan the details of the Fair. The members are individuals and representatives from businesses or community groups that are dedicated to raising the profile and quality of science education in the County. If you or your organization would like to get involved, please contact us.

In addition to awarding medals and qualifying projects for the California State Science Fair, competators are also vying for a variety of special awards. These are donated by members of the community and generally focus on a scientific area or discipline (i.e. watershed, evolutionary biology, electronics, etc.) important to the donor. If you are interested in participating by sponsoring a special award, please contact us.

Finally, we also need donations to make it all possible. While the fair is organized by volunteers, there are substantial costs for hosting the event. If you would like to make a tax deductable donation to the Fair, you can do so via the PayPal link at right.